Crushes
by rayemars
Summary: Kakashi ponders on the reason students get crushes on their teachers, and the risks of Sasuke doing so. Ficlet.


Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

Kakashi-Yondaime, Sasuke-Kakashi, both one-sided. Contains vague-ish spoilers for the Kakashi arc, but is set before Sasuke leaves. And **man**, the fourth Hokage needs a name.  
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It was a fairly normal thing to have crush on your teacher.

At the beginning of adolescence, hero-worship or respect could get tangled up in the new, bombarding hormones and create a belief in an attachment that wasn't actually there. Kakashi remembered having a serious attraction to his own teacher when he was twelve, the first time he saw the man _fight_.

He'd considered it an insult for **him** to be placed in a team with a worthless bloodline heir and a talented but physically useless girl, even if he had been fortunate enough to get the fourth Hokage as his teacher. But then came the month when Rin made chuunin level and the war spilled over into Fire country, forcing their team to take upper level missions despite the fact that Obito was still a genin. That was the month he first saw the man use his jutsus in a real fight, not just in training.

It was, simply, awe-inspiring. Kakashi's father had been a genius, and Kakashi was skilled himself, but the fourth Hokage was something beyond genius. Kakashi considered him a demigod.

He eventually stopped idolizing the man--gods didn't _die_--and the crush faded back to a deep respect for his talent if not for his toleration of weaker ninjas. Years later, Kakashi began to suspect that the man had known about the crush; but, since Kakashi firmly abided by rule twenty-five as well as the other ninety-nine laws of shinobi conduct, he had never given the man a reason to have to do anything about it.

Over a decade later, Kakashi sometimes wondered what the man would have done if he **had **said something. It would come in useful right about now.

Not that Sasuke was saying anything, either. He was even being subtle; but Sasuke didn't realize that Kakashi had very good right-side peripheral vision while reading. Or that Kakashi had spent a lot of time covertly watching _his_ teacher's hands as well.

It was a fairly normal thing. Maybe it would have been a little more normal if one of them had been female, but the fact of the crush itself didn't disturb Kakashi. Had it been Sakura or Naruto, he would have deal with it if that became necessary, but otherwise he'd have waited until it passed and they looked to their own age group again.

The trouble was that it was Sasuke.

So that respect--Uchiha Sasuke didn't do "hero-worship"--which was the main fuel for the crush was tangled up in fact that Kakashi was the first person in seven years to make an effort at getting past those walls the boy had been building up.

He'd known that there could be consequences for setting himself up as a stable force in a chaotic (though well-concealed) life, especially after this mess with Orochimaru and the curse seal began. . . . But in the beginning Kakashi had had debts to repay, to himself as well as to Obito.

And in the end, he just didn't want to see Sasuke fuck up his life on a quest for vengeance.

If Sasuke ever chose to say anything or act on the crush, Kakashi would have to handle the situation in a way that make it clear he felt hormones were just coloring the boy's perceptions, while leaving intact the trust that he had worked too hard to build. It was not something Kakashi was looking forward to. Sasuke might just accept his reply, or it might ruin everything, or he might react in any way in-between; the man suspected it would all depend on how and when Sasuke told him.

It was really not something Kakashi was looking forward to.

But so far, Sasuke had said nothing, done nothing, and possibly still thought that it was a secret. So Kakashi left things as they were, taught Sasuke the chidori, and pretended that he didn't see the boy watching his hands turn a page as he read during their meals.


End file.
